San Angelo Police Department Pleas to 'Just be Average'

Last weekend, a shooting in north San Angelo resulted in the untimely deaths of two residents in their 20s. Within hours the San Angelo Police Department had identified the suspect and set up SWAT operations around his house.

Friday, at the Meet and Confer meeting in City Hall, Police Chief Tim Vasquez described a change in his department’s operations over the past several years, noting a rise in arrests and traffic stops, a drop in the municipal courts serving warrants, and an increase in self-initiated police work.

In 2003, 85 percent of police work was responding to calls for service, the remaining 15 percent self-initiated, Vasquez said. By 2013, the ratio had changed to 55 percent call, 45 percent self-initiated, he explained, meaning the officers were out on the streets involved in their work.

Officers with tenure at the local PD assert that the city’s police department operates at a high standard, however are paid 20 percent lower than the average of comparable “benchmark” cities. Benchmark cities are based on size, comparable markets and comparable tax bases, Sergeant Korby Kennedy explained in an interview Friday.

In past years, the City of San Angelo funded a pay study to determine the city’s stance in comparison to others in the state, analyzing a number of data including the cost of living and average salaries of city employees. After analyzing the data and sourcing the numbers for 2013, the San Angelo Police Department presented a proposal to city management and financial staffers last week with the simple request to ‘just be average’—or at least be within 3 percent of the standard.

“When you look at those benchmark cities, the average city employee—including the police department—is about 80 percent of the average of those benchmarks as far as pay,” Kennedy explained. “If the average of all 13 benchmark cities is…if the top officer is at $64,000…we’re typically 20 percent below that. Our proposal was to be at between 97 and 103 percent of our benchmarks. So basically, all we’re asking for, is the average.”

The benchmark cities include the municipalities of Abilene, Midland and Odessa, Lubbock, Tyler and Brownsville, to name a few. According to the data collected in the pay survey and additional data for 2013 the SAPD collected from verified sources, the San Angelo Police Department falls behind all 13 benchmark cities in the ‘top pay, or end-of-career' category, and is second only to Midland and Brownsville in starting salaries for sergeants and lieutenants, while line officers fall behind Brownsville on starting salaries. Conversely, San Angelo’s cost of living is 89.7 percent of the state average, .4 percent behind the benchmark average of 90.1 percent.

As the across-the-board lowest paid for advanced officers, the PD is seeing a lack of incentive for officers to stick with the department and advance through the ranks. The correlation is visible in officer retention issues, Kennedy says, noting that half of the new recruits since 2004 have left the department after training.

The Police Department employs a maximum of 174 sworn officers at any time. As of Wednesday of last week, there were 166 officers on staff, 10 of which are in training. Since 2004, the PD has hired and trained 173 officers—a whole department—which has cost the City $11.3 million in new officer recruiting, review, investigation, testing and training in that timespan. Of those 173 officers, 86 have since resigned, equating to an approximate $5.65 million investment with no return. Partially in an effort to combat the lack of ROI, the PD proposed a pay raise to bring the department more in line with comparable cities.

“We identified a retention issue…and we don’t want to do that anymore. We don’t want to be a training ground for anybody else’s department,” Kennedy says, adding that the PD can track who’s trained locally and moved off to other law enforcement agencies. “We want to pick them, we want to train them, and we want to keep them; and that’s why we proposed what we proposed.”

With the arguments stacked in their favor, the police department hit a wall when discussions moved into the meet and confer forum last week. The primary concern of city staffers was finding a source for the additional funding. In search of that source, the City Manager and financial team requested that officers of the SAPD look into their departments to see where costs could be cut and money could be shifted.

An additional problem arose, however, when the City staff looked into the police department’s annual budget. For the past several years, the SAPD has overdrawn their budget by several hundred thousand dollars. Last year alone, the department exceeded their revised budget by roughly $667,000, an over-expenditure that was anticipated, Vasquez said, citing necessities such as gasoline and electricity whose annual usage is higher than the monies allocated.

In an initial effort to free up some cash, Sgt. Kennedy presented a Sick Time Buy-Back Proposal, which adjusts the payout officers receive after retirement, quitting or termination, which the City openly embraced.

As a standard, the police department allots 10 hours a month of sick leave. If those hours aren’t used, the total remaining—capped at 720 hours—are paid back to the officer upon leaving the department. Kennedy’s proposal was that an officer in the department for less than 10 years not receive any payout, nor would those with less than 400 hours. The payout would be given in full for officers with a tenure of 10-19 years, and increase gradually in five-year tenure cases up to 1,500 hours for 30 years of service. The buy back has not yet been initiated, but has widespread approval of City officials.

In addressing the budget on an annual basis, SAPD and the City financial staff work together to negotiate the budget needs for the police department, which the City then presents to Council. In years past, Council has denied requests for additional funding, resulting in the beyond-budget expenses seen on an annual basis, Chief Financial Officer Michael Dane said Friday. Dane also added that the request for funding was sent to Council twice at the request of the PD, but was met with dissension as Council perceived the City to be pushing the PD’s agenda.

As council members are not required to attend meet and confers, much of the discussion and lengthy deliberation may be circumnavigated, with council members hearing only abbreviated versions of the issues for the first time when it reaches the meeting room podium. The meetings are open to the public and the council as well, however conflicting schedules and other commitments may affect attendance.

According to Mayor Dwain Morrison, he and Council were simply not aware of the severity of the PD’s needs. Morrison said that his position on police funding requests is that it helps Council to make better and more informed decisions by having the police state exactly what they need in funding and resources to protect the citizens of San Angelo. That data is used in the Council’s deliberations to find the new funding, which may be achieved by cutting other areas of the City’s budget, raising revenues to meet the needs, or denying the additional funding.

Naming some of the benchmark cities, Mayor Morrison added, “The City of San Angelo is at a disadvantage to other cities when competing for salaries because we do not have the industrial property tax base that Midland or even Abilene have. Since most of San Angelo’s combined property values are in residential areas, the city’s tax rate is already high,” he said.

San Angelo’s city tax rate is set at $0.7810, or $781 per $100,000 in property value.  The City of Midland’s rate is $0.43; Odessa’s is $0.51, and Abilene’s is $0.686. In budget workshops last year, city staff said that every one cent increase in property tax nets the City $370,682 in additional revenue.

Morrison said that there are other funding options, like harvesting the revenue from the city’s recent bonanza in increased receipts from sales taxes, issuing a bond, or having the voters decide via referendum if they are willing to pay more taxes to cover the police department’s funding requests.

Relying solely upon sales tax receipts for permanent budget increases, like adding more to the police payroll, is dangerous, Morrison said, because sales tax revenues can be volatile. “What if the national economy tanks and no one is buying as much as they are now?” Morrison asked. “Whatever we decide, we will deliberate in the open so that everyone has the opportunity to understand the problem and the direction we as a council decide to go,” he said.

The police department’s negotiation for wages has only just begun. In a decision reached Friday, the PD and the City’s financial staff will systematically go through the budget and department expenditures to try to find solutions and opportunities to save money. The process is lengthy and an estimate for the negotiation period has not been made.

“We know that we’re not going to accomplish this October 1 of 2014,” Kennedy said. “All we’re asking is to stay within a certain percentage—our minimum being 3 percent—of these other benchmark cities.”